Melbourne, Dec 7 : Canadian tennis star and 2019 US Open champion, 21-year-old Bianca Andreescu, on Tuesday became the first high-profile woman player to pull out of the Australian Open — the opening major of 2022 — due to mental health issues arising from “quarantining”.
Andreescu, who reached a career-high ranking of world No.4 in October 2019 before sliding to a current ranking of 46, said on twitter that she doesn’t feel like herself on a lot of days, “especially while I was training and/or playing matches”.
In a long statement posted on social media, Andreescu said, “As you all know, the last two years have been very challenging for me for a variety of reasons.
I was particularly affected by the fact that I spent several weeks in isolation quarantining this year, which had a profound impact on my mental and physical health.My grandmother was also hospitalized for several weeks with a COVID infection.This really affected me .
“.I felt very unwell, especially when I was training or playing matches.I felt like I was carrying the entire world on my shoulders.I could not detach myself from everything that was going on off the court; was feeling the collective sadness and turmoil around and it took its toll on me,” said Andreescu.
“I want to give myself extra time to re-set, recover, and grow from this (as cliche as that sounds) and continue to inspire by doing charity work, giving back and working on myself because I know by doing this, I will come back stronger than ever.My season in Australia will not begin this year.I will instead take the time to reflect, train and prepare for the 2022 tennis season.”
Andreescu was injured and missed the entire 2020 season.In February, she played her first match in over a year at Australia’s Open.
She was in Miami Open’s WTA 1000 final less than two months later.There she defeated Garbine Muguruza from Spain and Maria Sakkari from Greece.Then she retired in the final against Ashleigh Barty, No.1 from Australia.
She split with Sylvain Bruneau in June, and brought on veteran coach Sven Groeneveld.Andreescu lost in the third round to Anett Kontaveit, Estonia at Indian Wells, in her 2021 season.
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